the public expectation, should find by chance a colourable pretext for alleging it, or for alleging it at that time precisely which the prophecies had pointed out.

That these coincidences do meet in the cases alleged, and that they are also coincidences of extreme natural improbability, it can scarcely be necessary to explain in detail. But in estimating our evidence that the Scripture miracles were really those works which they pretended to be, it is surely the business of every candid enquirer to appreciate carefully what chance that may be, which at least refers the very strongest claim of miracles which has ever at any time been advanced in the world, not to some adventurer selected at random from the various pretenders to supernatural powers, who have in all ages sported with vulgar credulity, but to that CHRIST who was designated by a chain of prophecies not less singular than his miracles themselves, who was "the desire of all nations" a whom many now waited for as the "consolation of Israel", now, in the very ripeness of that steady opinion which had become current

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throughout the whole East, that it was fated for Judea to attain supreme dominion." " What also is the chance which could so colour the pretext of a miraculous resurrection of Christ from the dead, as to establish the belief that such an event had taken place, not at any time which the actors in such an affair might have it in their power to select or pretend; but on the very day on which it was predicted to happen?

Every thing that can be replied to these questions is that the prediction itself may be supposed in this case to have worked out its own accomplishment, may possibly have inspired the artifice to conceive, and the courage to attempt, an imposture. But it could not have inspired the Jews with a disposition to receive the miracles of a meek and lowly prophet, who disappointed their hopes of national glory, nor to neglect those precautions which, if Christ had not indeed risen again, must necessarily have baffled all the hopes and designs of his dispirited and scattered disciples. On the contrary, it induced, and must have induced them, to watch

a Suetonius in Vesp. So also Tacitus, Hist. V. 13.

the more strictly both Jesus and his disciples; to scrutinize the more narrowly that attestation, which could not be established but to the disgrace and downfall of all their own long cherished ambition. Miracles, under these circumstances, they were the less inclined to admit, because they knew previously how much was depending on them. Consequently the prediction must have rendered deceit the less practicable, and authorises us every way to conclude the more forcibly for the certain truth of the miracle.

To conclude:-the confidence which we may be allowed to feel concerning miracles from the mere improbability, as it has been shown in this chapter, of their being, though extraordinary, yet accidental events, may be further strengthened, perhaps, by the following consideration. Allow the conjecture that, in the extremity of our ill fortune, we may possibly be deceived by the turning up against us of one chance in a million yet still, if we believe in God's power and providence, it must, I think, remain certain that his paternal benignity will always protect us against the error of that one chance. He,

we well know, protects us effectually against every trial, whether of a moral, or of an intellectual nature, which we should be unable to bear, or discern. And to suppose it possible that he could permit an impostor, in a matter involving the first interests of religion, to avail himself of evidence which, after the most rigid castigation, would be found to come short of absolute demonstration, only by a difference which may be justly called infinitesimal, may, I think, be accounted wholly unreasonable.

Hence it follows, clearly, that the Scripture miracles, if performed in the manner which is related, are certain evidences of superhuman power.

a 1 Cor. x. 13.

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CHAPTER II.

THAT WE HAVE SUFFICIENT EVIDENCE OF THESE MIRACLES HAVING BEEN PERFORMED, OR OF THEIR HAVING BEEN PERFORMED IN THE MANNER RELATED.

SECTION I.

OF THE DIRECT EVIDENCE.

WE here assume that the records of these miracles, which are handed down to us from the original teachers of our religion, are records on the fidelity of which we may safely depend; that is, are records which give an accurate report of what was asserted by those original teachers. That the relations themselves are correct relations of fact: that the original relaters could not have been imposed upon to take common events for miracles, and could not have intended, or could not have been able, to impose on others, are points which must be proved in the present chapter. But that the accounts we have are substantially the same. with those accounts which were transmitted